She took long walks every evening, fighting no currents, letting her thoughts sort themselves out. Summer turned to autumn, and she crunched her way through falling leaves and then plodded her way through snow, minding her looms, saving her money.
In general, she was learning to live with secrets. She thought of her mother, of Lovey, of Gertrude Fiske—of the hidden stories in their lives, of the answers that might explain everything. Answers that would never come. Everyone carried their most grievous burdens secretly and separately; she had to accept that. But she would never know the truth about them. Perhaps the only way to keep secrets from harming others was to hold them tight in the heart and never let go. Perhaps that’s what her mother had tried to do. And Lovey.
It was only as she inhaled the sharp, crisp air of frosty nights that Alice began unwrapping the secrets she kept from herself. She began thinking about Samuel. She would see his eyes, be almost able to touch the texture of his skin. She could feel too much.
He had honored her wishes. He had made no attempt to contact her.
By this time, the workers of Lowell had stopped chattering about the missing scion. Why should they care? Nothing much had changed. A little easing of hours, a taste more of money, a few machines oiled and fixed—enough to calm the unrest, but not enough to stamp it out.
There was very little talk among the girls on the morning trek to the mill, either. On Saturdays, she and Mary-o, Delia, and Jane would hunch down before the wind and make their way to town and visit the bank—every week a dollar for her savings fund—then they would buy themselves a small lemon cake and sip tea at the Lowell Bakery, letting the hot brew warm their insides while pretending to be ladies of leisure.
Daisy showed up one evening, bringing supplies for Alice’s cameos—and four orders from her friends. Alice was surprised and grateful. It was restful, those evenings when she was able to carve; what a splendid thing to finally have good supplies and tools. More orders were coming in. Alice allowed herself to dream of the possibility of opening a small studio in Boston, perhaps in a year or so.
She told no one of her more ambitious carving effort—a bust shaped from clay that she was working on at Benjamin Stanhope’s surgery. He had consented to be her model, seemingly content to stay still for hours without conversation.
Sometimes, on her walks alone, she mulled over what she had learned from all of this. Was she able to be brave? She would do her best. Don’t tar all with the same brush—yes, she was learning that, too. Not all Methodists had tried to shield a murderer from justice; not all were pulled in by charlatan ministers.
What she could not answer was, did she ask herself the right questions? Answers were hard enough. But the wrong questions took one into wilderness.
There was another accident—no, two. The worst was when a belt of leather worn from constant friction burst into flame, almost burning the hand of a girl on a loom nearby. The girls at the mill said little about these incidents—it was the prudent course, given that the number of mill workers who still advocated resistance had dwindled. The leaders, the ones who stood up to the Fiskes, were either muted or gone. Immigrants were coming in, cheerful-enough people, but rough and rowdy, at least in Mrs. Holloway’s estimation.
It took a few months, but the undercurrents of change began, finally, to surface at Boott Hall.
It began with Jane. “My parents say that, since the trial and all the unrest, it isn’t respectable to work as a factory girl anymore,” she announced at dinner one night. “I don’t agree at all, I told them they should know my friends. But they want me to come home.” She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “They aren’t proud of me anymore, that’s the fact of it.”
“Janie, we will miss you,” cried a bewildered Ellie. “What will you do?”
Jane brightened. “My pastor at home says I can be a missionary, take God to the Indians out west. He will sponsor me.”
“Oh, my goodness,” breathed Delia. “How brave.”
“He said girls need to think more of themselves, that we all can do more than sew and weave.”
A silence fell over the room as each girl pondered this.
Over the months, others began to drift away, some to marry, some to teach, but none—they told each other this with pride—to milk cows and clean out pigsties. Never again would they do that.
On a bright, windy day, Alice, filled with new resolve, marched by herself down to the Central Street office of The Lowell Offering with a manuscript in hand. The usual routine was to place an offering on a desk in the outer office and then leave, hoping to be notified that it would be read and published. They won’t want this, she told herself as she walked inside. But I’m going to try, regardless.